“Even if we don’t sign up another runner — and we will — the Savannah Rock ’n’ Roll Marathon is still the second-largest road race in Georgia,” said Dan Cruz, a spokesman for the Competitor Group, the company that operates the Rock ’n’ Roll Marathon series. “Having 15,000 runners signed up at this point is a real testament to Savannah as a great destination.”

The Competitor Group set a lofty standard with the inaugural race. The San Diego-based company, the city of Savannah and Visit Savannah, the local convention and visitors bureau, spent more than a year marketing the event. They flooded niche and mainstream media in Georgia, South Carolina and Florida with advertising and press announcements.

The results were approximately 23,000 registrants and 19,616 actual participants.

The approach has been more measured this year. Competitor just recently started an ad blitz in Atlanta — home to several thousand of last year’s runners — and is in the process of ramping up local marketing efforts.

Local registrations were down by more than 1,000 runners as of Sept. 1 compared to last year. More than 2,300 Savannah-area residents ran in the 2011 race.

“We’re looking to get that first year magic back out of the bottle here shortly,” Cruz said. “We’re confident we can get the community energized again.”

Out-of-town interest in the marathon remains strong, with more than half of those currently registered hailing from outside Georgia. That’s welcome news to tourism-related businesses, which saw a boon from the 21,117 hotel room nights generated during race week last year.

“There are more rooms available downtown right now than a year ago, but that could be a product of visitors who ran here last year now knowing they don’t have to stay right on Bay Street,” said Joe Marinelli, president of Visit Savannah, the local convention and visitors bureau. “We’re going to have another great weekend.”

The Competitor Group and the city are working together to make sure downtown businesses other than hotels enjoy a great weekend this year. Downtown was a “ghost town,” as one small business owner called it, on race day a year ago, with road closures and accessibility concerns prompting many race participants to park at remote locations and shuttle in for the run.

“We conveyed the message for people to avoid parking downtown as much as possible last year, and the message got through loud and clear – too loud and clear,” city spokesman Bret Bell said. “This year we have to strike a balance between avoiding a crush of 20,000 runners coming downtown at the same time and making sure all our downtown parking is utilized.”

Part of the yet-to-be-finalized “comprehensive parking plan” is to sell race-day passes for the city’s parking garages during the Health and Fitness Expo. All runners must visit the expo, held on the two days before the race at the Savannah International Trade and Convention Center, to pick up their race bib and timing device.

That tactic could divert several thousand cars from shuttle lots located outside of downtown into the garages. Bell noted that several Wilmington Island residents he knows drove to within sight of downtown last year only to hop on the Truman Parkway en route to remote parking at the Savannah Mall.

“That just doesn’t make sense when we have parking capacity downtown,” Bell said.